


Ripples in the long, long stream

by Roselightfairy



Series: Finding a Voice [10]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2019-10-31 05:28:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17843342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roselightfairy/pseuds/Roselightfairy
Summary: A series of brief moments in the lives of Legolas and Gimli.  Originally posted as minifics on Tumblr.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If any of you follow me on [Tumblr](roselightfairy.tumblr.com), these stories will not be new to you, and I'm sorry for that. I debated whether or not to post them over here, but I decided that I wanted to have them archived with the rest of the series-- but that they're too little and plotless to be individual stories. So if you're interested, here they are. I'm just tagging the story as a whole with the general emotions you can expect from this series as a whole, and if each chapter requires individual warnings, I'll give them as needed. Chapters will be posted in the order of when they were written, not how they fit into the series.
> 
> For this first chapter: nothing but suffocating married fluff.

Gimli jerked awake, lurching up and forward in a sudden motion – though he could not for the life of him think what had startled him – and smashed his forehead into something alarmingly close, and not nearly soft enough.

“Wha – ?” he gasped, his hands flying to his head just as he heard a matching squawk of pain and felt the whoosh of air and hair past his face.  He opened his eyes just in time to see Legolas roll off of him, both hands clutched to the lower half of his face.

“You –” Gimli stared at him, processing, and then he could not help himself: he burst out laughing.

“Cruel,” Legolas moaned into his hands, though he too laughed cautiously after a moment, wiping watering eyes with one hand while keeping the other pressed to his nose.  “Although I admit it is no more than I deserved.”

“I should say so!” gasped Gimli, heart still racing from the first shock.  “What were you, looming over me like an owl stalking a mouse?”

Legolas flushed.  “I like watching you sleep,” he protested meekly.  “Though if I am to be thus punished for my fascination, perhaps I shall have to do without the pleasure.”  He sniffed, probing carefully at his nose with the hand that remained clamped to his face.

All Gimli’s bluster drained away at Legolas’s earnestness, as it did so often; he did not even try to fight the soft warm feeling melting his insides.  “None of that, now,” he said, rolling over and pushing the dark hair out of Legolas’s face.  “Let me see.”

He pried Legolas’s hand gently from his face to inspect the damage for himself, until he was satisfied that Legolas’s nose was as whole as ever, if a bit tender.  “I am sorry,” he said, bending over and dropping a light kiss onto it.  It wrinkled in reflex, and Gimli laughed.  “Can you bring yourself to forgive me?”

Legolas laughed as well, reaching up to catch Gimli’s face and guide him – very carefully – back down for a deeper kiss.  “I think I can manage that.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gimli is aging, and the sea is calling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was inspired by the Whumptober prompt "Insomnia," and meant as sort of a tiny follow-up to To the Sea. It is much less angsty than that one, but much more angsty than the previous minific.

“You have not been sleeping.”

It was the way Legolas looked away, the way his fingers plucked at one another, that convinced Gimli that he was right.

He had been noticing hints of it for some time, though he had not trusted his inklings at first.  Legolas was an elf and he a mortal, after all, and it was not unusual for Gimli to fall asleep first, to rise in the morning and see that his husband lay already wakeful beside him.

But it was unusual to wake during the night to a cold bed, alone because Legolas had not yet come to join him—or had already risen—or had not deigned to rest at all.  And now he looked on Legolas’s decidedly weary face, and his movements, which Gimli now clearly noticed were a shade more sluggish than usual—and he wondered how long Legolas had hidden this from him, before he had caught on.

“Is it the dreams?” he asked, taking Legolas’s hands gently into his own, running his thumbs over the knuckles.  Pushing down the wave of fear and grief that swelled up at the thought.  “Have they worsened again?”

Legolas bit his lip, looking as though he might cry.  “I am sorry,” he whispered.

Gimli closed his eyes, fighting tears of his own.  He felt _old_ in a way he rarely felt, even still: bowed under a weariness that only took him with thoughts of the dreams, of the sea, of the time that they had that was always trickling away.

“Do not apologize,” he said, and drew Legolas tight into the circle of his arms.  Legolas’s own hooked around his shoulders like the clasp of a lifeline, holding them both to an anchor, keeping them from being swept away.  “Never that.”

“I am not leaving,” Legolas breathed in his ear.  “Not yet.”

The words were a buoy, and Gimli clung to them.  “I know.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Legolas greets Gimli on a visit to Ithilien.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And... a whiplash-inducing journey back to fluff. ALSO ITHILIEN.

The further Gimli wandered away from the settled area, the closer he had to look at the ground, picking his way through roots and tangled branches and ferns.  The trees and undergrowth grew more thickly here than was to his comfort, and elves – particularly these elves – did not, in his opinion, have an appropriate concept of _trails_.

Eleniel had said he would find Legolas out here, but that he had not wandered too far – but then, Gimli knew his husband, and Legolas’s understanding of _wandering too far_ was very different from Gimli’s own.  And Gimli had no intention of wrestling trees for hours on end.

He brushed a twig out of his beard and contemplated calling Legolas’s name.  His ears were keen; surely he would hear…

“Hello.”

Gimli’s feet left the ground, and he nearly tripped over them coming down in his haste to whirl around.  Had he been holding anything, he surely would have flung it.

“ _Legolas_!” he sputtered, one hand coming to his chest, his heart pounding in his ears like a stampede of _mumakil_.  “What are you – why –?”

From where he hung – dangling upside down from a tree branch, his face directly at Gimli’s level and inches away – Legolas gave an unrepentant smile.  “Welcome back, my love!”

“Are you _trying_ to give me heart failure?”  Try as he might, Gimli could not keep his tone belligerent.  “A cruel elf you are indeed, to toy thus with your husband’s mortal senses!”

He found room amidst all the fond affront for a touch of pride when instead of shrinking away, Legolas laughed and reached out to take Gimli’s face between his hands.  “I am sorry,” he said, bending his head (in a way that made Gimli’s neck twinge in sympathy) to press a kiss to Gimli’s forehead.  “I wished only to surprise you.”  Another kiss, this time to Gimli’s nose.  “Is there any way you can ever forgive me?”

“Perhaps,” Gimli said, letting his eyes half-lid, tilting his head and parting his lips.  “It might be possible to convince me.”  And when Legolas leaned in to kiss him fully, Gimli caught hold of his shoulders in an iron grip and _tugged_.

Legolas dropped with a squawk and a great rustling of leaves, rolling into enough of a ball to protect his head but not enough to save him from landing in an undignified heap at Gimli’s feet, all rumpled clothing and fallen leaves and wide brown eyes.

“Now you are forgiven,” said Gimli, and he did not try to hold back a grin.

Legolas’s look of betrayal lasted only seconds before he burst into delighted laughter, so bright and merry that Gimli felt himself falling in love all over again.  “And they say your people are rigid and humorless,” he said.  “I have long since learned never to believe them.”

“It is a lesson you had best retain,” said Gimli.  “Along, perhaps, with the reminder that dwarves make dangerous enemies!”

He turned, making to walk back the way he had come; behind him, Legolas sprang to his feet.  “That I know,” he said, wrapping his arms around Gimli from behind and draping over his shoulders like an entirely new kind of elven cloak.  “Then I am lucky you love me, am I not?”

He brushed a kiss against Gimli’s cheek from behind, and Gimli could not help nuzzling back into the caress.  “You are,” he said, his heart melting, “and I do.  That too you had best not forget.”

Legolas let out a happy sigh.  “I never intend to.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Legolas and Gimli send each other letters when they're apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was one that I once upon a time intended to write as an actual Story, but since it was a struggle to write this much, I realized that wasn't going to happen. But have fluff and new love anyway.

_My dear Gimli,_

_I am not unaccustomed to the feeling of missing a loved one, but never have I known an absence like this before._

_It is not the dull ache I have long known, faded into a pain at the back of my heart that only sharpens at certain moments few and far between.  It is the ache of a fresh-lost limb, whose absence I feel more for the illusion of its presence - I only remember it is gone when I go to move it, and then I realize that a part of me is elsewhere, and I yearn for nothing more than to have it back._

_I can marvel at it now, for how is it that I could not have known the shape of my heart before?  But then, perhaps it is only fitting, for the first time I knew the extent of my affection was when we were first parted, when I first realized that half of it beat in your breast instead._

_I have no better words to tell you this, so I hope you will understand that I love you and miss you most dearly…_

* * *

Ravens of Erebor, Legolas thought, were much akin to their dwarven counterparts: disinclined to idle chatter and often unprepared for the full spectrum of elven emotion.

This one watched him with beady, impatient eyes, urging him to cease his delaying and pass over the letter, that the bird might finally return to his mountain home.  "I know,“ Legolas said, moving to do so and then abruptly losing his nerve and twitching back.  "It is only…”  His belly fluttered with nerves, and he abruptly regretted all he had written; he wished to tear the letter into pieces and begin anew.

“Goodness, Legolas,” said Eleniel, and it was a sign of his distraction that he jumped at her sudden appearance. “Be careful - I can feel the heat of your blush from arm’s length away.  Do you wish to rival the sun herself?”

“Hush,” Legolas mumbled, swatting in her direction and flushing harder.

Eleniel grinned at the letter.  "Is that written for anyone in particular?“ she teased.  "And do you plan to seal it with a kiss, as do the children of men with letters to their sweethearts?”

Legolas clutched the letter to his chest as though to protect it, and again he fought the urge to rewrite the whole thing.  But Eleniel seemed to sense it, and her teasing smile softened.  "Relax, Legolas,“ she said.  "I saw him as well as you did, and I assure you the infatuation goes both ways.”

She patted his arm before slipping away and leaving him to gaze down at the letter, and then up into the exasperated eyes of the raven.

“Do not tell,” he whispered, and glancing around to see that no one was watching, he pressed his lips to the seal before passing the letter to the bird and watching both soar away in the direction of the mountain.

* * *

Gimli could not wait until he had returned to his own room to read the letter.  He stood exactly where he had received it, in the hall outside his preferred drafting room, and broke the seal as his fellows flooded out of the room around him.  And there he stood, reading… and reading…

“Goodness, my lord Gimli.”  It was Alma, the young apprentice who had impressed him enough that he was thinking of taking her on.  "Are you quite well?”

He looked up, ready to reassure her, but then he saw that she was giggling, surely more aware than she had pretended of the contents of his letter.  "I do not think I have ever seen you blush so before…”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gimli wakes up suddenly in the middle of the night, shortly after the breaking of the Fellowship. Pre-relationship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompted by [ultra-firelily](https://ultra-firelily.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr: the idea of Legolas and Gimli consoling one another after the breaking of the Fellowship.

Gimli woke abruptly, though he knew not immediately why. It was almost as though he had woken from a nightmare he could not remember – but he had never been one to dream vividly, or be disturbed into waking by nighttime images. He lay blinking for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness and wondering what had woken him so suddenly.  
  
Then all the horrible details of the day before came rushing back: the emptiness in Boromir’s eyes; the haunting song Aragorn and Legolas had sung over his body – the abrupt blow that had shattered their Fellowship into too many tiny pieces. The chase that lay ahead.  
  
He was to have been roused earlier, he remembered, for a watch – and suddenly he was no longer wondering why he had woken in the middle of the night, but rather why he had not been woken already.  
  
He blinked against the fog of sleep and sat up. Aragorn lay still on the ground, fast asleep, and Legolas stood with his back to both of them, a silhouette against the dark sky, his head tilting just slightly in one direction, then the other. His back was rigid with tension, but Gimli knew he would be aware that he was not the only one awake.  
  
"You did not wake me for a watch," Gimli whispered.  
  
“No.”  
  
Legolas said nothing else, and Gimli rubbed sleep out of his eyes, too groggy still for delicate prying. “Why?”  
  
“You were tired.” Still Legolas did not turn, his shoulders stiff and straight. “It seemed foolish to rouse you, when I knew I would find no rest myself. You said it yourself: you must sleep now, so you may run the better when the sun shows her face again.”  
  
Gimli struggled free of his bedroll and rose, coming to stand beside his friend. “You still wish we had not stopped.” Indeed, not even to being blindfolded in Lothlorien had Legolas protested so strongly as to the thought of stopping for a rest.  
  
Legolas gave a twitch of one shoulder that might have been a shrug. “I do not know mortal abilities as the two of you do; I must heed your counsel.”  
  
“But you like it not.” Gimli laid a cautious hand on Legolas’s upper arm, felt the muscles beneath hard with tension.  
  
At last Legolas turned to look at him, and his dark eyes seemed to glitter. “Something is amiss with this night,” he whispered. “The wind whispers of evil thoughts and fell deeds, and every moment that passes raises my certainty that we will not catch up in time. If you and Aragorn are well-rested tonight, perhaps we might run with more speed tomorrow."  
  
Gimli squeezed his arm. Rarely had he heard Legolas speak so grimly – or with such certainty in his dark pronouncements – but his own thoughts could offer no comfort. In the end, all he could say was, “Forgive me for the limits of my mortal body, my friend.”  
  
“If you will forgive me in turn for my urgency.” Legolas sighed, reaching up to lay his free hand over Gimli’s own just for a moment. “Do not apologize for your need for rest, Master Gimli; rather, take it while you may, and despise me not when I rouse you to run once more.”  
  
The time had been short, maybe, but it seemed years had passed since Gimli had thought he despised Legolas. “I could never,” he promised. “It is selfish to think it, maybe, but even as I fear for our friends, the little comfort I find is in your continued presence at my side.”  
  
For the ghost of an instant, a tiny smile flickered across Legolas’s face. “In that, we are of an accord,” he said. “Sleep, then, and I will stand guard over your rest.”  
  
Indeed, the heavy fog of exhaustion was descending upon Gimli once more; lacking the strength to resist, he nodded and yawned. He went back to his bedroll, and for the first time, Legolas turned fully around to watch him until he was nestled among his blankets once more.  
  
The last thing Gimli saw before drifting off again was the outline of Legolas against the night sky.


End file.
